AIDS 2016: Justice Edwin Cameron addresses delegates at Durban AIDS conference

I owe my life to you, says judge

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“The fact that I am here today at all is a tribute to the activists, researchers, doctors and scientists in the audience,” Judge Edwin Cameron told delegates to the Durban Aids conference, delivering the Jonathan Mann memorial address. He asked sex workers and transgender people to join him on stage. His godson Andy Morobi also addressed the conference.

It is a great privilege and an honour to be here. At the start of a very busy conference, with many stresses and demands and anguishes, I want to start by asking us to pause quietly for just a few moments.

It has been 35 years since the Western world was alerted to Aids. The first cases of a baffling, new, terrifying, unknown syndrome were first reported in the northern summer of 1981. The reports were carried in the morbidity and mortality weekly reports of the CDC on 5 June 1981.1

These last 35 years, since then, have been long. For many of us, it has been an arduous and often dismaying journey.

Since this first report, 35 million people have died of Aids illnesses2 – in 2015 alone, 1.1 million people. 3

We have felt the burden of this terrible disease in our bodies, on our minds, on our friends and colleagues, on our loved ones and our communities.

Aids exposes us in all our terrible human vulnerability. It brings to the fore our fears and prejudices. It takes its toll on our bodily organs and our muscles and our flesh. It has exacted its terrible toll on our young people and parents and brothers and sisters and neighbours.

So let us pause, first, in remembrance of those who have died –

  • those for whom treatment didn’t come in time
  • those for whom treatment wasn’t available, or accessible
  • those denied treatment by our own failings as planners and thinkers and doers and leaders
  • those whom the internal nightmare of shame and stigma put beyond reach of intervention and help.
  • These years have demanded of us a long and anguished and grief-stricken journey.
  • But it has also been a journey of light – a journey of technological, scientific, organisational and activist triumph.

So we must pause, second, to celebrate the triumphs of medicine, science, activism, health care professional dedication and infrastructure that have brought ARVs to so many millions.

Indeed, the fact that I am here today at all is a tribute to the activists, researchers, doctors and scientists in the audience.

Many of you were responsible for the breakthroughs that led to the combination anti-retroviral treatment that I was privileged to start in 1997 – and which has kept me alive for the last 19 years.

I claim no credit and seek no praise for surviving. It felt like an unavoidable task.

All of us here today who are taking ARVs – let us raise our hearts and humble our heads in acknowledgement of our privilege – and often plain luck – in getting treatment on time. That treatment has given us life.

So let us pause, third, to honour the doctors – the scientists – the researchers – the wise physicians and strong counsellors who have saved lives and healed populations in this epidemic.

As important, fourth, let us pause to honour the activists, whose work made treatment available to those who would not otherwise have received it.

We pause to honour the part, in treatment availability and accessibility, of angry, principled and determined activists, in South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign and elsewhere. For millions of poor people, their anger brought the gift of life.

Without their courage, strategic skill and passion, medication would have remained unimaginably expensive, out of reach to most people with HIV. They led a successful campaign that saved millions of lives.

The fact that many millions of people across the world are, like me, receiving ARV treatment, is a credit to their work.

They taught us an important lesson. Solidarity and support are not enough. Knowledge and insight are not enough. To save lives, we need more. We need action – enraged, committed, principled, strategically ingenious action.

They refused to acquiesce in a howling moral outrage. This was the notion that life-saving treatment – treatment that was available, and that could be cheaply manufactured – would not given to poor people, most of them black, because of laws protecting intellectual property and patent-holders’ profits.

The Treatment Action Campaign and their world-wide allies frontally tackled this. They changed the way we think about healthcare and essential medicines access.

What is more, without the Treatment Action Campaign, President Mbeki’s nightmare flirtation with Aids denialism between 1999 and 2004 would never have been defeated.

Instead, the TAC took to the streets in protest. They demanded treatment for all. And when President Mbeki proved obdurate, they took to the courts.

Because of my country’s beautiful Constitution, they won an important victory. Government was ordered to start making ARV treatment publicly available.

Today my country has the world’s largest publicly provided anti-retroviral treatment program.4 More than 3.1 million people, like me, are receiving ARVs from the public sector.5

I am particularly proud that when someone with HIV registers for treatment in South Africa, they should not be asked to show an identity document or a passport or citizenship papers. That is as it should be. The imperatives and ethics of public health know no artificial boundaries.

In the sad history of this epidemic, the triumphs of Aids activists, on five continents, are a light-point of joy.

So there is much to celebrate. I celebrate the joy of life every day with the medication – which keeps a deadly virus effectively suppressed in my arteries and veins, enabling me to live a life of vigour and action and joy.

But we must not forget that Aids continues to inflict a staggering cost on this continent and on our world.

What is more important than my survival, and that of many millions of people in Africa and elsewhere on successful ARV treatment, is those who are not yet receiving it.

There still remains so much that should be done. More importantly, there still remains so much that can be done.

Too many people are still denied access to ARVs. In South Africa, despite our many successes, well over six million people are living with HIV. And, though about half of South Africans with HIV are still not on ARVs,6 from September this year ARVs will be provided to all with HIV, regardless of CD4 count.

Globally, of the 36.7 million people living with HIV at the end of 2015, fewer than half had access to ARVs.7

Worse, the pattern of ARV availability is one that reflects our own weaknesses and vices as humans – our prejudices and hatreds and fears, our selfish claiming for ourselves what we do not grant to others.

Most of those still in need of ARVs are poor, marginalised and stigmatised – stigmatised by poverty, sexual orientation, gender identity, by the work they do, by their drug-taking and by being in prison.

Dr Jonathan Mann, to whom this lecture is dedicated, did pioneer work in recognising the links between health and human rights. He stressed that to address Aids, “we must confront those particular forms of inequity and injustice – unfairness, discrimination – not in the abstract, but in its specific and concrete manifestations which fuel the spread of Aids.”8

He recognised that the perils of HIV are enormously increased by laws that specifically criminalise transmission of HIV and exposure of another to it. This was also confirmed by the wonderful and authoritative work the Global Commission on HIV and the Law has recently done.

​These laws are vicious, ill-considered, often over-broad and intolerably vague. By criminalising undefined “exposure”,9 they ignore the science of Aids, which shows how difficult HIV is to transmit.10 Apart from driving those at risk of HIV away from testing and treatment, they enormously increase the stigma that surrounds HIV and Aids.

Across this beautiful continent of Africa, men who have sex with men (MSMs) remain chronically under-served. They lack programs in awareness, education, outreach, condom provision and access to ARVs. As a recent study by Professor Chris Beyrer and others has shown, we have the means to end HIV infections and Aids deaths amongst men having sex with men. Yet “the world is still failing”.11

For this, there is one reason only – ignorance, prejudice, hatred and fear. Theworld has not yet accepted diversity in gender identity and sexual orientation asa natural and joyful fact of being human.

Seventy eight countries in the world continue to criminalise same-sex sexual conduct. Thirty four of them are on this wide and wonderful continent of Africa.

It is a shameful state of affairs. As a proudly gay man I have experienced the sting of ostracism, of ignorance and hatred. But I have also experienced the power of redeeming love and acceptance and inclusiveness.

We do not ask for tolerance, or even acceptance. We claim what is rightfully ours. That is our right to be ourselves, in dignity and equality with other humans.

Discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation or gender identity is a colossal and grievous waste of time and social energy.

As our beautiful Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said, when we face so many devastating problems – poverty, drought, disease, corruption, malgovernance, war and conflict – it is absurd that we waste so much time and energy on sexual orientation (“what I do in bed with whom”.)12

The sooner we accept the natural fact that gender and orientation diversity exists naturally between us, the quicker we can join together our powers of humanity to create better societies together.

The same applies to sex workers. Sex workers are perhaps the most reviled group in human history – indispensable to a portion of mostly heterosexual males in any society, but despised, marginalised, persecuted, beaten up and imprisoned.

Sex workers work.13 Their work is work with dignity.

Why do people do sex work? Well, ask a sex worker –

  • To buy groceries, and pay their rent, to study, to send their children to school, and to send money to their parents and extended family.
  • It is hard work. Perilous work. Sex workers have a tough, dangerous job. They deserve our love and respect and support – not our contempt and condemnation.

They deserve police protection, not exploitation and assault and humiliation.

More importantly, they deserve access to every bit of HIV knowledge and power that can protect them from infection and can help them to protect others from infection. 14

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) works for sex workers.15 It should be made available to them, as a matter of urgent priority, as part of all national Aids treatment programs.

In September 2015, the World Health Organization, recognizing PrEP’s efficacy, recommended that PreP be provided to all “people at a substantial risk of HIV,” including sex workers. 16

When we in South Africa launched our three-year National Sex Worker HIV Plan in March 2016, we proposed providing PrEP to sex workers. WHO recognized South Africa as the “first country in Africa to translate this recommendation into national policy.”17

Beginning last month (June 2016), the first programs began providing daily PrEP to sex workers in South Africa.18

Criminalising sex workers is a profound evil and a distraction from the important work of building a humane society.19

Especially vulnerable too are injecting drug users. Upon them are visited the vicious consequences of perhaps the most colossal public policy mistake of the last 80 years – the war on drugs.

The vulnerability of injecting drug users is evident in the high percentage of injecting drug users with HIV. Throughout the world, of about 13 million injecting drug users, 1.7 million (13%) are living with HIV. 20

They are denied elementary life-saving services. This is not on the supposedly “dark” continent of Africa – but in the United States of America. If you want an example of evidence-ignoring public policy, that causes loss of life and injury, and spread of HIV, do not look complacently to President Mbeki’s South Africa twelve years ago – look to the United States of America, now, and the federal government’s refusal to make needle substitution available to IDUs . While the US government’s decision to partially lift this ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs earlier this year is a welcome development, this decision was only spurred by an outbreak of new HIV cases among drug users in the United States, 21 and the delay has undoubtedly resulted in preventable HIV infections. 22

Injecting drug users living with HIV are further denied access to treatment. And the United States and Canada, healthcare providers are less likely to prescribe ARVs for injecting drug users, because they assume that IDUs are less likely to adhere to treatment and/or will not respond to it. This is in spite of research showing similar responses and survival rates for those who do have access to ARVs. 23

We know exactly what we have to do to tame this epidemic.

We have to empower young people and especially young girls, to make health seeking choices when thinking about sex and when engaging in it. 24

We have to redouble our prevention and education efforts.

Prevention remains a key necessity in all our strategies about Aids.

Second, we have to test, test, test, test, test, test and test. We cannot promote consensual testing enough. Testing is the gateway to knowledge, power, understanding and action.

Without testing there can be no access to treatment. The more we test, the more we know and the more we can do.

Testing must always be with the consent of the person tested. But we have to be careful that we do not impose unnecessarily burdensome requirements for HIV testing.

HIV is now a fully medically manageable disease. Consent to testing should be capable of being implied and inferred. We must remove barriers to self-testing.

I speak of this with passion – because, by making it more difficult for health care workers to test, we increase the stigma and the fear surrounding HIV.

We must make it easier to test, not harder. Gone are the terrible days when testing was a gateway only to discrimination, loss of benefits and ostracism.

In all this, we must be attentive to the big understated, underexplored, under-researched issue in the epidemic. That is the effect of the internalisation of stigma within the minds of those who have HIV and who are at risk of it.

Internalised stigma has its source in outside ignorance, hatred, prejudice and fear.

But these very qualities are imported into the mind of many of us with HIV and at risk of it.

Located deeply within the self, self-blame, self-stigma and self-paralysing fear are all too often deadly. 25

We must recognise internalised stigma. I experienced its frightening, deadening effects in my own life. Millions still experience it. We must talk about it. And we must find practical ways to reduce its colossally harmful effects.

And, most of all, we must fix our societies. As my friend and comrade, Mark Heywood, has recently written, we have medically tamed Aids. But we have not tamed the social and political determinants of HIV, particularly the overlapping inequalities on which it thrives – gender, education, access to health care, access to justice. That is why prevention strategies are not succeeding.

A better response to HIV, Mark rightly says, needs a better world. Governments must deliver on their human rights obligations. Activists and scientists must join struggles for meaningful democracy, gender equality and social justice. Activists must insist on equal quality education, health and social services; investment in girls and plans backed by money to stem chronic hunger and malnutrition.26

But, to end, I want to return to the light points in our struggle against the effects of this disease over the last 30 years.

I want to end with a thrilling fact – this is that, unexpectedly, joyously, beyond our wildest dreams, perinatal and paediatric ARVs have proved spectacularly and brilliantly successful.

First, let us rejoice that perinatal transmission of HIV can be completely eliminated. It was about this that the Treatment Action Campaign fought President Mbeki’s government all the way to the Constitutional Court, the Court in which I am now privileged to sit.

Now we know how effectively we can protect babies at birth and before birth from infection with HIV.

In South Africa, the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV is now reduced to 4%.27 Worldwide, in 2015, 77% of all pregnant women received treatment to prevent perinatal transmission of HIV.28

Last year, Cuba became the first country to eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV entirely. 29 In 2016, Thailand, Belarus, and Armenia have also reached this milestone. 30

More even, fifteen years ago we didn’t know how well babies and toddlers would tolerate ARVs.

We didn’t know just a decade ago how young children born with HIV would thrive on ARVs.

And would they take their ARVS? Would they grow to normalcy?

Instead of this uncertainty, we now know, triumphantly, that ARVs work wonderfully for children born with HIV.

I want to rejoice in the beauty and vigour of my godson Andy Morobi. Andy and I became family twelve years ago, at the end of 2004.

He is young, energetic, ambitious and enormously talented. He was born with HIV. He has been on ARVs for the last eight years. Like me, he owes his life to the medical and social miracle of anti-retroviral treatment.

I want to end on another light point. I want to honour the treatment activists from Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Australasia and Asia, who fought for justice in this epidemic.

I want to honour them, like Dr Jonathan Mann, to whom this lecture is dedicated. Like my mentor, Justice Michael Kirby of Australia, for their energy and courage and determination and sheer resourceful and resilience in fighting for justice in this epidemic.31

And I want to end by celebrating the fact that we have sex workers here this morning. They are wearing the T-shirts in the slide a few minutes ago. The T-shirts say: “THIS IS WHAT A SEX WORKER LOOKS LIKE”.

And, most of all, as a gay white man who has lived a life privileged by my race and my profession and my maleness, I ask that we celebrate the astonishing courage of transgender activists, of lesbians and gay men across the continent of Africa and in the Caribbean.

They are claiming their true selves. They do so often at the daily risk of violence, attack, arrest and imprisonment.

They have the right to be their beautiful selves. They are claiming a right to be full citizens of Africa, the Islands and the world. They have done so at extraordinary risk.

They know that they cannot live otherwise.

It is to these brave people that this conference should be dedicated: to the sex workers, injecting drug users, migrants, lesbian, gays and transgendered people, the children, the activists, those in prison, the poor and the vulnerable.

It lies within our means to do everything that will ensure whole lives and whole bodies for everyone with HIV and at risk of it.

All it requires is a passion and a commitment and a courage starting within ourselves. Starting within each of ourselves. Starting now.

Thank you very much.

For footnotes please see original articles in GroundUp

Beyond Blame @ AIDS 2016 Communique

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA, 17 JULY 2016

We cannot end the HIV pandemic without ending the epidemic of criminalisation of people living with HIV.

As activists, advocates, lawyers, and researchers engaged in the fight against HIV criminalisation, we are acutely aware of the harms it causes – to people who are criminalised, to those living with the threat of criminalisation, and to the HIV response in our countries. We stand in solidarity with survivors of unjust criminalisation, whose powerful stories we have heard and whose courage we honour.

The science of HIV is settled. HIV treatment works: it prevents disease, prevents death, and prevents transmission. Yet the scientific advances of recent years, which have saved countless lives, have all too often been misunderstood, misrepresented or ignored in the criminal justice system. The number of countries – 72 – with laws targeting people with HIV is increasing, not falling, and unjust prosecutions continue unabated. To protect both public health and human rights, these unjust laws must be repealed, police and prosecutorial policies must be reformed, and legal practitioners must be educated about the reality of HIV today.

There has been insufficient attention paid to the issue of HIV criminalisation within the scientific and medical community. While many researchers and clinicians are powerful and valued allies in our fight against unjust laws, we believe the medical and scientific communities can do more – indeed they must do more if the promise of ending HIV is to be achieved.

There has also been insufficient attention paid to these issues by the International AIDS Conference. As the leading global event in the HIV/AIDS arena, the IAC should provide greater prominence to the ways in which law and health intersect, especially in the area of HIV criminalisation. We call on the IAS to make a clear commitment to greater visibility of and access to HIV criminalisation-related research and policy.

We call on the scientific and medical community to join us as advocates in the fight to end HIV criminalisation. We are united by a common desire to see an end to new HIV infections, to AIDS deaths, to HIV-related discrimination, and to stigma against communities living with and affected by HIV. There can be no ‘end to AIDS’ while people with HIV face police action, prosecution, and imprisonment. We cannot reach the 90-90-90 target while criminal laws actively discourage testing, treatment, and prevention.

Public health policy, treatment, and support programmes are all impeded if they are not coupled with creating an enabling environment free of HIV criminalisation. The time is right for a new, holistic approach that incorporates all these issues under a single umbrella of action to end HIV.

ABOUT HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE

HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE is an initiative made up of global, regional, and national civil society organisations – most of them led by people living with HIV – who are working together to build a worldwide movement to end HIV criminalisation. All of the founding partners have worked individually and collectively on HIV criminalisation for a number of years.

The founding partners are: AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA); Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network; Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+); HIV Justice Network; International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICW); Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN-USA); and Sero Project (SERO).

ABOUT BEYOND BLAME @ AIDS 2016

On 17 July 2016, 150 advocates, activists, researchers, and community leaders met in Durban for a full-day pre-conference meeting for AIDS 2016, to discuss progress on the global effort to combat the unjust use of the criminal law against people with HIV. The Durban meeting followed similar successful meetings held at the International AIDS Conferences in Melbourne (2014) and Vienna (2010). The purpose of the meeting was to provide practical opportunities for advocates working in different jurisdictions to share knowledge, collaborate, and energise the fight against HIV criminalisation. Detailed summaries and outcomes of the meeting, including a video summary, will be available in due course from www.hivjusticeworldwide.org

Justice Edwin Cameron: Keynote Speech to Beyond Blame @ AIDS 2016

Justice Edwin Cameron’s closing keynote speech to Beyond Blame: Challenging HIV Criminalisation, a pre-conference to AIDS 2016, held on Sunday 17th July 2016 in Durban, South Africa, convened by HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE.

BEYOND BLAME
Challenging HIV Criminalisation @ AIDS 2016, Durban

(29 min, HJN, South Africa, 2016)

On 17 July 2016, approximately 150 advocates, activists, researchers, and community leaders met in Durban, South Africa, for Beyond Blame: Challenging HIV Criminalisation – a full-day pre-conference meeting preceding the 21st International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2016) to discuss progress on the global effort to combat the unjust use of the criminal law against people living with HIV.

Attendees at the convening hailed from at least 36 countries on six continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America).

Beyond Blame was convened by HIV Justice Worldwide, an initiative made up of global, regional, and national civil society organisations – most of them led by people living with HIV – who are working together to build a worldwide movement to end HIV criminalisation.

The meeting was opened by the Honourable Dr Patrick Herminie, Speaker of Parliament of the Seychelles, and closed by Justice Edwin Cameron, both of whom gave powerful, inspiring speeches. In between the two addresses, moderated panels and more intimate, focused breakout sessions catalysed passionate and illuminating conversations amongst dedicated, knowledgeable advocates

HIV criminalisation firmly on the agenda at AIDS 2016

For those of you in Durban for AIDS 2016 this week and next, make sure you don’t miss all the amazing HIV criminalisation events taking place.

Download and print this 2-pager covering all the HIV criminalisation highlights (including posters and Global Village events) put together by the HIV Justice Network on behalf of HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE.

And of course, we hope to see you at our pre-conference this Sunday July 17th, Beyond Blame: Challenging HIV Criminalisation. Download the Beyond Blame Final Programme.

Only a few places remain, so register now if you want to attend.

HIV criminalisation highlights at AIDS 2016 by HIV Justice Network

USA: Criminalisation advocates explain why using the right language is key to success

Jennie Smith-Camejo, the communications director of Positive Women’s Network – USA, stood at the podium at the second HIV Is Not a Crime conference on HIV criminalization in May. Behind her was a PowerPoint presentation with several examples of recent egregious headlines about people living with HIV.

“Woman With HIV Convicted of Biting Sister During Fight,” screamed one. “Man With HIV Assaults Hospital Employee,” read another. “Suspect Threatens to Transmit HIV to Police Officer,” announced a third.

“You don’t really hear [much] about HIV in the news anymore,” Smith-Camejo noted as she flipped through these headlines. “So, if these are what you’re seeing and hearing, what would you think?”

That is the challenge for people fighting HIV criminalization laws. How do you push past the fear and panic around HIV transmission when click-bait headlines dominate media coverage?

There’s no one opinion about what kind of messaging is most effective. For some, using language that appeals to their audience’s core values has been effective. Others reject that strategy, instead demanding more inclusive, intersectional messages that do not leave out the most vulnerable, such as sex workers and trans people.

“When you’re talking to people outside the HIV community, you have to think about what they’re thinking and hearing,” stated Jennie Smith-Camejo, the communications director of Positive Women’s Network – USA, an advocacy network of women living with HIV. “People’s views on policies and issues are more shaped by emotion than reason,” Camejo-Smith noted. But advocates have the power to appeal to these emotions. Using stories can change hearts and minds in ways that cold hard facts often do not, she said.

Jennie Smith-Camejo gives one example of messaging that appeals to a more conservative audience. When talking to people who may not care about the injustices of police profiling of trans women or HIV criminalization, she points to the way in which Cyd Nova, the harm reduction coordinator at the Saint James Infirmary, a clinic for current and former sex workers, frames the issue of policing as one that interferes with personal responsibility and protecting public health:

Trans women are disproportionately profiled and targeted by law enforcement for harassment and arrest. And because of policies like [using] condoms as evidence, trans women often face a choice between protecting themselves and their partners from HIV and risking arrest.

Effective messaging can sometimes prevent a harmful legislative amendment from even reaching the floor.LaTrischa Miles is a board member of Positive Women’s Network – USA, as well as the founder and president of Grace, a faith-based support group in in Kansas City for women affected by and living with HIV. When she learned that Missouri legislators planned to introduce a bill that would make it a crime for a person with HIV to spit at someone, she and other activists sprang into action. They contacted legislators and debunked the myths about saliva and HIV transmission. “Because they heard from us in the community, they didn’t even bring it forward for the hearing,” Miles recalled.

In Colorado, members of the Mod Squad and Senator Pat Steadman utilized language that appealed to a broader political spectrum as they pushed SB 146, a bill that repealed two criminalization statutes and reformed another. Instead of talking about criminalization as an injustice that needed to be eliminated, Steadman appealed to conservative values, such as personal responsibility. “We talked about barriers that criminalization poses to testing, treatment and public health,” Steadman stated in a celebratory address. “The biggest thing to take on is people’s fear and ignorance.”

To combat stigma and hammer home the importance of changing the law, Steadman’s talking point became: “The criminal law is a clumsy and ineffective tool for protecting public health.”

Advocates also shifted their messaging. Barb Cardell, a long-time HIV activist and member of the Colorado Mod Squad (“Mod” is short for modernization), recalled that the group had initially called themselves the HIV Decriminalization Task Force, then the STI Grassroots Modernization Alliance.

“We didn’t change anything else we were doing,” recalled John Tenorio, a rural Mod Squad member. Simply changing their name brought them more respect and support.

In Colorado, it appears that the shift worked. Steadman and the Mod Squad faced little opposition to repealing and reforming the criminalization statutes. (Instead, Steadman noted, the sticking point was the provision allowing minors to be tested and treated for HIV without parental consent.) SB 146 passed in both houses of the legislature and is now awaiting the governor’s signature.

But not everyone agrees with shifting the message to appeal to more conservative audiences. “You have to think about decriminalization — true repeal of these outrageous laws. Don’t talk to me about modernizing things to make them sound better. I am not here to wait years and years and years for this to happen,” said Maxx Boykin, an organizing co-chair of the Chicago chapter of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), a national organization of 18- to 35-year-old black activists, and a community organizer at AIDS Chicago. He tied HIV criminalization to the pervasive state violence against black people, particularly black youth. “You have to stop criminalizing who I am, who my friends are.”

Appeals to modernize laws will not stop the collision of criminalization faced by those marginalized by race, gender identity and poverty, he explained. “I have to talk about how [criminalization] disproportionately affects black people,” Boykin told TheBody.com. He draws parallels between HIV criminalization laws and the disparities in crack-cocaine sentencing. It’s a parallel that those already organizing against police and state violence understand all too well.

He also challenges people to think about criminalization as a whole, tying HIV criminalization to issues of racism and mass incarceration as well as explaining how people living with HIV are treated in prison and what HIV criminalization actually looks like.

Marco Castro-Bojorquez, a documentary filmmaker, community organizer and member of the steering committee for the U.S. People Living With HIV Caucus, arrived in the United States from Mexico 20 years ago. For him, an intersectional analysis needs to be present in every discussion.

“It’s difficult to talk to people about race and class,” he told The Body.com. “But you need to do it when talking about any injustice.” These conversations can be difficult, he acknowledged. “White people get offended or angry or sad,” he said. For them, he said, “it’s important to check your privilege and make sure you are not making us [people of color] responsible for your feelings. People don’t understand the amount of energy it requires for us [to explain racism and other injustices we face].”

He concentrates his energies on working with people who feel the brunt of marginalization the most — people of color, immigrants and trans people. In 2015 he helped launch Venas Abiertas: Una Red de Inmigrantes Latinxs Viviendo con el VIH/Sida (Open Veins: A Network of Latinx Immigrants Living With HIV/AIDS) for HIV-positive Latino immigrants to advocate for their needs and work with allies.

When Castro-Bojorquez talks about HIV criminalization, he’s often met with shock that such laws even exist. He recalls repeated conversations with his best friend. “He could not believe you could have sex with someone, use a condom, not transmit anything and still be thrown in jail,” he recounted. The two continued to have conversations about criminalization — and Castro-Bojorquez’s work to end it. “Now he’s super-knowledgeable about it,” he said.

Castro-Bojorquez also cautions against the tendency to characterize certain statutes as “not so bad,” explaining that “any law that criminalizes HIV is bad.”

Regardless of the words they choose, advocates say the message needs to be clear and not veer into other topics. Mark King, the blogger behind My Fabulous Disease, learned this firsthand.

In 1992, when Magic Johnson first announced that he was living with HIV, King was the newly appointed communications person for the Los Angeles Shanti Foundation, which provided emotional support for people dying from AIDS-related complications. Johnson’s announcement inevitably sparked office gossip, including speculation about which AIDS organization Johnson might endorse as well as the fact that Elizabeth Taylor had sent Johnson flowers, King recalled. That gossip was still buzzing when the phone began ringing with press requests. “I was young and stupid,” King recounted and, when he spoke with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, he began chattering away, repeating the office gossip.

The next day, the Los Angeles Times ran King’s statements about Elizabeth Taylor and the rivalry for Johnson’s support among AIDS organizations. “I gave the reporter the story he wanted to write — about the competition among agencies — rather than the message I was supposed to deliver,” King recalled 24 years later. The lesson? “Hold on tight to your message and repeat it over and over so they can’t put in some stupid quote about Elizabeth Taylor.”

Victoria Law is a freelance writer and editor. Her work focuses on the intersections of incarceration, gender and resistance. She is the author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women.

Originally published in The Body

Advocates fighting to end HIV criminalisation reach a global TV/web audience on The Stream

Last night, HIV criminalisation advocacy reached a global audience on both TV and the internet with The Stream, on Al Jazeera English.

During the 30 minute programme, HIV criminalisation survivor, and Sero advisory board member, Ken Pinkela appeared with co-hosts Malika Bilal and Omar Baddar in the Washington DC studio to discuss his case and the role HIV stigma played in his unjust prosecution and wrongful conviction.

He was joined via Skype by ARASA’s Executive Director, Michaela Clayton, who discussed the impact of HIV criminalisation on women in southern and eastern Africa.

Anand Grover, Senior Advocate at Supreme Court of India, founder of India’s Lawyers Collective, and a former UN Special Rappporteur on the Right to Health highlighted the many human rights concerns with a punitive approach to HIV prevention.

I was also on programme, highlighting the work of the HIV Justice Network and citing data from our recent report, Advancing HIV Justice 2.

Contributions were also seen from US HIV advocates Shawn Decker and Nina Martinez, and Colorado Senator Pat Steadman who worked with the Colorado Mod Squad to recently completely overhaul HIV criminalisation in Colorado.

Watch the entire programme below or on the The Stream’s website.

US: Second HIV is not a crime training academy creates an important intersectional shift in the US anti-HIV criminalisation movement

The second HIV Is Not a Crime Training Academy, which took place in May at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, brought together more than 300 advocates from 34 US states, as well delegations from Canada and Mexico.

Organised jointly by two of our HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE partners, the Sero Project and Positive Women’s Network–USA, the meeting was a unique opportunity for the people most affected by HIV criminalisation to take centre stage and have their voices be heard.

As Mark S King’s blog post highlighted in his blog and video produced the week following the meeting:

The intersections of race, gender, and sexuality were given as much weight as strategy sessions on working with legislators and lawyers, and the program repeatedly drove home the fact that criminalizing behaviors related to specific groups of people is as American as apple pie. Plenary speakers included advocates for women (including transgender women), current and former sex workers, immigration reform and drug legalization advocates, and, most powerfully, people who have been prosecuted under HIV criminalization statutes.

The theme of intersectionality and what it means for HIV criminalisation advocacy was further explored in this thoughtful analysis from Olivia Ford at The Body.com.

At the first HIV Is Not a Crime gathering in Grinnell, Iowa, in 2014, the sessions focused largely on unpacking the process of mounting a legislative campaign. Huntsville attendees also received training on important skills such as using data and collaborating with attorneys. The dominant theme, however, was the mandate to understand and combat HIV criminalization as a component of the system of over-policing and mass incarceration that disproportionately and unjustly impacts black people, queer folks, immigrants, drug users, sex workers, transgender individuals and those living with and without HIV at the intersections of this constellation of experiences.

The meeting was also an opportunity to celebrate the recent modernisation of Colorado’s HIV criminalisation statutes by the Colorado Mod Squad and their political allies, notably Senator Pat Steadman; and to hear from HIV criminalisation survivors and their families about what the HIV criminalisation – and the movement to end it – means for them personally.

The biggest political coup of the meeting was a welcome video from Hilary Clinton who said that if she wins the Presidential election, she will work to “reform outdated, stigmatising” HIV criminalisation laws.

Aside from those highlighted above, a number of other blog posts and articles have been produced since the meeting.  As well as a fantastic Storify compilation by PWN-USA of social media produced during the four days, these include pieces from:

In addition, the HIV Justice Network was there with our video advocacy consultant, Nicholas Feustel of georgetown media, capturing the entire event on video, and we will be releasing a film providing a detailed overview of the entire meeting, as well as lessons learned, in the next few weeks.

U.S.: Clinton Promises She’ll Reform HIV Criminalization Laws in her opening presentation at 2nd HIV is Not a Crime conference

Tonight, speaking via a pre-recorded video to attendees of the HIV is Not a Crime Training Academy, Hilary Clinton says if she wins the Presidential election, she will work to reform outdated, stigmatizing HIV criminalization laws. Clinton thanked attendees for their work, saying that efforts like HIV is Not a Crime “lift us all up.”

Saying we have “come a long way” since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Clinton acknowledged, “We still have long way to go.” She spoke about how HIV disproportionately impacts “communities of color, transgender people, gay and bisexual men and young people, around the world.”

Prior to Clinton’s speech, attendees had the pleasure of hearing from Kerry Thomas, talking via phone from an Idaho correctional center, where he’s serving a 30-year sentence. Thomas said he carries a photo with him from the first HIV is Not a Crime conference, held two years ago. Positive and thankful, Thomas nevertheless affirmed that the state court has dismissed his case, but promised “we’re appealing down the road.” Thomas shared his appreciation for outside support and thanked prison officials for allowing him to participate in events like this and serve on the Sero Project Board.

Bryan Jones (who, like Thomas was featured in our special on HIV in prison) described being open about his HIV status in prison as “somewhat suicidal,” and asked if things were different for Thomas.

Thomas replied that it hadn’t always been easy, but he’d recently become more vocal about his status, because, “At some point, someone has to say ‘That’s enough!’ and take on these things.”

Naina Khanna, Positive Women’s Network’s executive director, follwed Thomas, remarking how important his involvement was because, “We should be taking leadership from the people most impacted by these laws.”

PWN sponsored a post-welcome documentary screening of Consent, in which eight women examine the problems inherent in using sexual assault law to prosecute alleged non-disclosure. Khanna’s seemed to hint at that topic when she noted,

“Some of these laws have been put on the books to protect women” She added that sometimes, “women have been complicit in criminalization,” which is one reason the Positive Women’s Network is determined to be involved in HIV-decriminalization.

Khanna then spoke passionately about America being “a country built on back of people brought here forcibly,” arguing, “Our economy is based on people being policed and criminalized,” and that people with HIV weren’t the only targets: but also trans folks, immigrants, people of color and other marginalized groups.

Following Clinton’s televised speech, a panel formed on stage consisting of people who have been prosecuted and parents of several men currently imprisoned under HIV criminalization laws.

The most compelling was a young black man from Oklahoma who told of being arrested and charged with a felony for allegedly sneezing on someone.  When placed into custody, he claims the police put a bag over his head, and — allegedly because he responded, “What the fuck?” — he was charged with disorderly conduct.

Most of his charges have since been dropped, but he goes to court July 1st on the disorderly charge. Since being arrested, he said he has received death threats and has had to move several times. He told the audience that he had gone jogging for the first time in years without being worried he might be harassed.

His voice breaking, he added, “I appreciate you not looking at me like I’m dirty.”

Originally published in hivplusmag.com

Hillary Clinton’s full message to HINAC2 on ending HIV criminalization (2016)

A video recorded by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton specifically for the HIV is Not a Crime II – Training Academy.